Instructional Technology and More…

Month: May 2016

Originally, I was thinking of penning this post, “Survival of the Fittest for Your Tech Integration Strategy”. Read more to find out why. As a former biology teacher, turned tech integrator, I found Martin Reeves, Simon Levin and Daichi Ueda’s recent article featured in the Harvard Business Review interesting. The Biology of Corporate Survival offers a unique perspective on what causes corporations to fail or succeed, juxtaposed with survival principles from natural ecosystems. You can also find some of these ideas revealed in Reeves’ co-authored book, Your Strategy Needs a Strategy.

Image taken from “The Biology Of Corporate Survival” – January – February 2016 (c) HBR.org

The writers investigated 30,000 public firms in the US and came to the conclusion that businesses are disappearing like never before for their failure to adapt to the complexity of their environment. If we were to align this idea to our various school contexts, we could then pose the question of why technology integration efforts fail? In what ways do we anticipate, build and sustain complexity?

Their research takes a rather interesting look at the intersection of business strategy, biology and complex systems and what makes each of the systems more robust. Think about it, the more biologically diverse an environment and ecosystem are, the better their chances of natural survival and sustainability. Additionally, it is known that healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters. The writers refer to these systems as “complex adaptive systems”. In this vein, not only are businesses and biological species complex adaptive systems (CAS), but so are schools.

In a complex adaptive system, the interactions between local events and organisms shape the system, resulting in a never-ending feedback loop, where systems are influenced by the individuals and the individuals by the system. Such systems are nested in broader systems — i.e. Teachers and students are nested in broader systems of school and local culture.

The authors propose six (6) principles that make a CAS robust and I would argue the same in light of technology integration efforts. Over the next few posts, my plan is to tackle each one of these in the context of technology adoption and integration. I hope you will join me on this journey as I try to make sense of this.

As Reeves, et. al., see it, here are those six principles:

maintain heterogeneity of people, ideas and endeavors

sustain a modular structure

preserve redundancy among components

expect surprise, but reduce uncertainty

create feedback loops and adaptive mechanisms

foster trust and reciprocity in their business ecosystems

And please, by all means, feel free to challenge me on these ideas – it helps me solidify my own understanding – that’s the point – right?

Like this:

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Dude!!!

Did you know you can now accept questions from the audience while presenting in Google Slides? How dope is this?! Well, maybe I’m late to this, but for me, this is a game changer… Think about students in your class who might be reluctant to raise their hand or speak in front of their peers? This creates a way for them to insert their voice in a less-threatening way. It could also be a means of developing confidence in that student and helping to provide additional opportunities for students to feel included.